Barcarola für großes Orchester

Program notes

About the Work

Henze wrote the Barcarola in the summer of 1979 on a commission from the Tonhalle-Gesellschaft Zürich, and Gerd Albrecht conducted the premiere in Zurich on April 22, 1980. It came out of a difficult period in the composer’s life, overshadowed by illness and by the deaths of close friends, among them the film director Luchino Visconti and the composer Paul Dessau. The low D-flat (in German, Des) on which the piece begins is a musical nod to Dessau’s name.

A barcarole is traditionally a Venetian boat song, rocking gently in 6/8 time, and Henze’s work is indeed “water music”, but of a dark and mysterious kind. The boat here belongs to Charon, the ferryman who in Greek mythology carries the souls of the dead across the river Styx. Henze described how the “musical material is transformed, altered and developed in a way one might compare to the mental processes in the mind of a dying person.”

The musical language draws on twelve-tone technique and sharp dissonance, yet the piece stays direct and expressive. Henze also plants familiar landmarks, which he called “bridges of communication” for the listener: the Eton Boating Song surfaces in the harps, and there is an allusion to the prelude of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

The Berliner Philharmoniker first performed the work in March 1982, with Henze himself conducting.

What to listen for tonight:

• The opening: The deep D-flat at the start, Henze’s greeting to his late friend Paul Dessau.

• The boat song: Listen for the gentle, rocking rhythm of the barcarole as it surfaces, is transformed, and sinks again.

• Familiar echoes: The Eton Boating Song in the harps and a glimpse of Wagner’s Tristan, moments of recognition in an otherwise dark landscape.

• Fragments of memory: Musical ideas flare up and disappear like memories glimpsed by a dying traveler, colorful phenomena on the horizon of consciousness.

• The crossing: Follow the long arc of the journey as the music moves toward the far shore.